An unfamiliar expression, a strange tone of voice — Huang Ling's husband looked as though he were sleepwalking. He stood on the bed, tiptoeing, his neck seemingly grasped by something unseen, looming over Huang Ling from above.
His eyelids rolled back, his eyes bulging out. In the bedroom shrouded by darkness, the man who had lived alongside Huang Ling for years stared at her with unblinking intensity.
"The soup I made for you is in the kitchen. Drink it while it's still hot."
Their rented room was small, the bedroom cramped. Huang Ling pressed her back against the wall, her fingers clenching the phone.
A terrible premonition gnawed at her — the moment she dialed, her husband would very likely kill her.
"I… I'm not very hungry." Huang Ling inched toward the bedroom door and grabbed the handle, but before she could open it, her husband leaped off the bed.
Jia Ming's body was unnaturally stiff, every joint unable to bend properly. He gave the impression of a puppet hoisted up by silk threads.
His pale hand seized Huang Ling's arm, and a wave of cold washed through her. For the first time, she realized her husband's palm carried not a shred of warmth.
Too tense to speak, she trembled faintly, pupils darting with unease.
Her husband's face drew close, eyelids rolled upward, the whites of his eyes swallowing most of the irises. "I've already made it. Just have a little."
"Fine, I'll drink…" Huang Ling didn't dare resist. She feared she would die in this narrow, dark room.
Her husband opened the bedroom door. The familiar yet strange man walked on tiptoe, leading Huang Ling by the hand into the kitchen in a grotesque, lurching gait.
The windows and doors were sealed tight. The apartment seemed utterly severed from the outside world.
Huang Ling offered no resistance as her husband dragged her into the kitchen.
The moment she stepped inside, she saw an iron pot sitting on the gas stove.
"I simmered it for the longest time to get it tender. Come taste it."
Jia Ming stood on tiptoe, lifted his stiff arms, and took the iron pot off the stove, setting it on the dining table.
He lifted the lid, and the room seemed to grow colder still.
He fetched two sets of bowls and chopsticks and placed them beside the pot, then fixed Huang Ling with a hollow stare. "Come taste it. It's delicious."
"Mm." Huang Ling nodded faintly and glanced into the pot. Inside was a cloth doll that had been chopped to pieces, its various fragments floating in the clear broth. Most conspicuous among them was a plastic face.
The doll's face had partially melted from the cooking, but Huang Ling recognized it at once — it was the very first doll Jia Ming had ever bought for her.
It had been cheap. Back then the two of them had just arrived in Jiujiang, not yet married, young and innocent, brimming with hope for the future.
Staring at the shredded doll in the pot, Huang Ling felt as though that precious memory had been savagely torn to shreds inside her chest.
"How could you use it to make soup?" The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Jia Ming did not answer her question. He picked up the ladle from inside the pot and filled a bowl to the brim. "Taste it."
"This is a memory between the two of us!" Huang Ling stood frozen at his side, feeling the strength drain from her body drop by drop.
"Memory?" Jia Ming gazed at the doll in the pot, and in a tone of genuine bewilderment, delivered an even more terrifying answer. "Isn't this our child? What does it have to do with memory?"
He swallowed, a hideous sound rattling up from his throat. "So many children — you throw them away and they come right back. Might as well eat them all."
No sane person could say such a thing. Jia Ming stood on tiptoe, his head lolling against his shoulder. "Hurry, eat it all! Eat every last bit!"